The Department of Players Safety (DOPS) has suspended defender Raphael Wolf for three games and fined him 600 euros. After a hard, unfair gang check against Daniel Leavens from Innsbruck in a 4-1 home win on Tuesday evening. The check in the 45th minute of the game was punished with a five-plus-game misconduct penalty after the referees had watched the video.
Leavens had to be treated first on the ice and later on the player’s bench, but in between he had heated arguments with the players on the Linz bench. A return to the ice was not possible due to the consequences of the check.
Wolf is therefore missing in the two away games in Klagenfurt and Fehervar as well as in the home game against Feldkirch on the national holiday.
The justification of the DOPS in the video:
The penalty for the unfair check by Wolf is understandable. Wolf received two of the three games for the check itself, and there was another one on top of that because he is a repeat offender.
A similar incident occurred in the first encounter between Linz and Innsbruck in the Tyrolean TWK Arena, with the victim of the wolf check acting as the culprit and Shawn St-Amant suffering a minor concussion. The two-minute penalty in the game and the two-game ban afterwards seem far too mild given the seriousness of the offence. More on this in the following article and the attached comment:
Source: Nachrichten
